Building Thoughtful AI Systems

CDSS 94 · Spring 2026

Mondays | Collaboration 5:10–6PM in Cory 521 | Lecture 6:10–7:30PM in Soda 306

A rigorous, hands-on exploration of post-training: how we shape model behavior through reinforcement learning, align objectives, design reward functions, build evaluations, and turn foundation models into reliable, useful AI systems.

Karina Nguyen Karina Nguyen Kevin Miao Kevin Miao
Weeks 1–2

Foundations

What We Owe Machines January 26, 2026

The hard problem in AI isn't making machines smarter, it's teaching them to handle problems without right answers.

Slides Notes
Lifecycle of a Language Model February 2, 2026

Understanding the full training pipeline from pretraining to deployment.

Slides Notes
Weeks 3–5

Tuning

Post-Training Foundations February 9, 2026
Slides Notes
Holiday February 16, 2026

No class this week.

Final Project A Due
RL: From Optimization to Exploitation February 23, 2026
Slides Notes
Model Behavior: Evals, Debugging, Alignment March 2, 2026
Slides Notes
Weeks 6–7

Agents

Search, Planning, Memory March 9, 2026
Slides Notes
Final Project B Due
Retrieval, Tool Use & Function Calling March 16, 2026
Slides Notes
Spring Break March 23, 2026

No class this week. Enjoy your break!

Weeks 8–9

Scaling

Prompt Optimization March 30, 2026
Slides Notes
Final Project C Due
Multi-Agent Systems April 6, 2026
Slides Notes
Week 10

Product

Product Workshop April 13, 2026
Slides Notes
Guest Lecture TBA April 20, 2026
Slides Notes
Final Project D Due
Guest Lecture TBA April 27, 2026
Slides Notes
Demo Day 🎉 May 4, 2026 · RRR Week

Present your final projects to the class.

Demo Day